The Inadequacy of "Instant Christianity"

By "instant Christianity" I mean the kind found almost everywhere in gospel circles and which is born of the notion that we may discharge our total obligation to our own souls by one act of faith, or at most by two, and be relieved thereafter of all anxiety about our spiritual condition and we are permitted to infer from this that there is no reason to seek to be saints by character.  An automatic once-for-all quality is present here that is completely out of mode with the faith of the New Testament . . .

. . . It is true that conversion to Christ may be and often is sudden . . . the true Christian has met God.  He knows he has eternal life and he is likely to know where and when he received it . . . but the trouble is that we tend to put our trust in our experiences and as a consequence misread the entire New Testament.  We are constantly being exhorted to make the decision . . . and those who exhort us are right in doing so.  There are decisions that can be made and should be made once and for all . . .

. . . The question before us is, Just how much can be accomplished in that one act of faith?  How much remains to be done and how far can a single decision take us?  Instant Christianity tends to make the faith act terminal and so smothers the desire for spiritual advance.  It fails to understand the true nature of the Christian life, which is not static but dynamic and expanding.  It overlooks the fact that a new Christian is a living organism as certainly as a new baby is, and must have nourishment and exercise to assure normal growth.  It does not consider that the act of faith in Christ sets up a personal relationship between two intelligent moral beings, God and the reconciled man, and no single encounter between God and a creature made in His image could ever be sufficient to establish an intimate friendship between them.  By trying to pack all of salvation into one experience, or two, the advocates of instant Christianity flaunt the law of development which runs through all nature.  They ignore the sanctifying (to set apart) effects of suffering, cross carrying and practical obedience.  They pass by the need for spiritual training, the necessity of forming right religious habits and the need to wrestle against the world, the devil and the flesh.

Undue preoccupation with the initial act of believing has created in some a psychology of contentment, or at least of non-expectation.  To many it has imparted a mood of disappointment with the Christian faith.  God seems too far away, the world is too near, and the flesh too powerful to resist.  Others are glad to accept the assurance of automatic blessedness.  It relieves them of the need to watch and fight and pray, and sees them free to enjoy this world while waiting for the next.

Instant Christianity is twentieth-century orthodoxy (traditions).  I wonder whether the man who wrote Philippians 3:7-16 would recognize it as the faith for which he finally died.  I am afraid he would not.

–A. W. Tozer

Philippians 3:7-16  But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.  What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things.  I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ–the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.  I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.

Not that I have already obtained all this, or already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.  Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it.  But one thing I do.  Forgetting what is behind and straining towards what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

All of us who are mature should take such a view of things.  And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you.  Only let us live up to what we have already attained.